you may be at the point where you just feel completely stuck and you have no idea what you need to do to make your drawings look more realistic maybe they look like this or this or even this one and you want them to look more like these well by the end of this training I want you to have the confidence to know what your next steps should be to make your very next drawing your most realistic one yet and I'm going to do that by going through the most common mistakes to avoid and I'm also going to talk through the important elements that every single realistic drawing needs to have let's get started realism is all about trying to create a drawing that looks lifelike and if you don't know what it is that makes a drawing realistic then it'll be hard to know exactly what's wrong with your drawings and why it isn't looking very realistic but the first thing that you'll probably do once you've picked your subject or your reference is to try and sketch it out and get a nice sketch outline down onto your paper and the first element of any realistic drawing is an accurate sketch with realistic proportions and if you start with an inaccurate sketch no matter how good your shading is or how much detail you add the drawing just won't look realistic if your proportions are off to start with and the biggest reason why I see proportions look inaccurate is because of the way the artist goes about actually sketching out the reference I see a lot of beginners start with one small area of a reference sketch that out with lots of detail and then slowly start to add more things in to the point that by the end you've realized you haven't got enough space to draw the arm or for the rest of the head and you have to start all over again but in my course drawing decoded I talk about the importance of actually working from Big shapes down to the smaller details so starting out by actually mapping in sort of where everything is getting it in the right place just in terms of like simple shapes or just sort of blocking in where those bigger elements are and then work down to the details once you've sort of got everything in the right place and you can also use something like the grid method or even use your pencil to help measure out where things are so that you place things a little bit more accurately because in order for drawing to look realistic you need accurate proportions but if I'm honest when I critique a lot of beginners drawings it's not really actually the proportions that make the drawing look unrealistic a lot of the problems come down to the shading and particularly the values and what value basically is is how light or dark your shading is and if you look at these few drawings can you see a common Trend with these different drawings what I see beginners do a lot is that they don't add a lot of shading and the shading that they do have is normally pretty light in value it's quite common for beginners to be a bit scared of going in with those darker values and to really add the Shadows to their drawings but as you can see here when a drawing doesn't have a lot of dark tones in it it just looks a bit flat and not very 3D and for something to look realistic it does need to have that 3D quality to it and the way that we can do that is to use a range of values in our drawing to really show you the power of adding a range of values to your drawing let's work on improving this drawing at the moment you can see it has a very small range of values and this is often because as a beginner you might only be using one pencil to do your drawing and if you are using just like a HB pencil to shade your drawing then this is really limiting you and it will be very very very hard to create a realistic drawing with just one pencil to get those darker values you need to use a range of different pencil grades so I recommend using a HB for those lighter tones but I also use something like a 2B and a 6B to make sure that I can also get in those darker values which are so important to making a drawing pop and stand out before I start shading I actually like to identify the different values in my reference I like to figure out where my lights my mid-tones and my darks are so that I have a clear idea when it comes to shading where these different values are and how dark I should be doing my shading you can see that as I add more shading to this drawing and really bring out those dark values you can see straight away how much this is making this drawing look more 3D and a lot more realistic I know a lot of beginners are scared to go darker because they think it will ruin their drawing but one thing that I like to do is I actually like to jump in and get in my dark values first it's the first thing that I do now why do I do this it seems weird you see a lot of people say build up from light to dark but the reason I do this is I feel like it saves me a lot of time when I get in my darkest values first I suddenly can see the lightest values which are the whites of the paper are my darkest values and therefore it makes it easier to judge all of the other values in my drawing also if you're adding in your darkest values first there's less fear of ruining your drawing because you've only just started getting the correct values in your drawing is hands down the most important thing to making a drawing realistic and that is because of two other elements that realistic drawings need to have which is accurate light and Shadow and also form but what on Earth do these things mean well for a drawing to look realistic you need to accurately show the different forms of the subject so basically you need to make it look 3D you need to show the volumes of each thing in your drawing and the way we do that is by using different values when light hits the subject it means that some things are in the light and some things aren't getting the light and the things that aren't really facing the light are darker in value and the things that are hit with the lights are lighter in value and when we are able to accurately sort of depict this lighting onto our drawing by shading the correct areas in Shadow and showing the things that are being hit by light as more of a lighter value then this starts to create that illusion of form in our drawing and gives it that 3D quality whenever I'm working on a drawing I make sure that before I start I sort of identify where is the light coming from and how is that affecting the values in my drawing so that I'm not just shading values randomly I understand which Parts should be lighter and which parts aren't really getting as much light and therefore should be shaded darker and another mistake that I see many beginners make is just ignoring the lighting and you'll notice this if a drawing has just been shaded with one or two values and you can't really get an idea of the form of the object the roundness for example if you're drawing a face it might look just one shade of value for the whole forehead so if we look at this drawing we haven't really got a clear idea of where the light is coming from it all sort of looks one value so I'm going to work on bringing out more of that lighting because if you look at the reference here you can see that there is quite dramatic lighting for this subject if your drawings look flat it's probably because you haven't added enough shading to build up the forms of your drawing and you haven't really accurately showed the lighting that's hitting your subject so look for the subtle Shadows the subtle Contours what what parts of your subjects aren't getting the light or are turning away from the light here you can see that I am really trying to show the roundness of this face by building up more shading where the light isn't able to get to certain areas to make this seem less overwhelming and complicated I really do recommend analyzing your reference before you jump into shading get a real idea of what's going on with your subject where are the different values how is the light hitting your subject and how is that creating different shadows in your drawing and so if you can Master value form light and Shadow and figure out how all of this works together your drawings will look so much more realistic but the problem is most beginners ignore this because they focus too much on detail it's a common beginner mistake to think they're more detail equals more realism when that's not actually necessarily true if you don't already have the other fundamentals in place like good values and correctly showing the form and light and Shadow in your drawing then detail and texture it's not going to make much difference consider detail as like the cherry on top of a cake but your cake your bread and butter is your values and building up that form details on top of that will make your drawing so much more realistic but without correct values and shading your drawings won't look very realistic I see a lot of beginners try to outline different parts of their drawing whether that's the jawline or the side of the nose and the common assumption they're adding that outline is going to make the drawing look a bit more defined and make it stand out more but most of the time it actually makes the drawing look more flat and less 3D and that's because in nature we don't have outlines there's no outlines around a face and for most things in nature there just simply isn't outlines what there is are edges and edges are crucial to creating form in your drawing in my course drawing decoded I talk about the different types of edges the two most common ones are hard and soft edges and an edge is basically referring to how you change between different values in your drawing so a hard Edge is where you have a sudden change between two values for example if the jawline is a lighter value and then you can see that my neck is slightly darker there's actually a hard Edge that separates them that's because one value suddenly changes to another value and then the other type of edge is a soft Edge which is where there's a gradual change between the two values but if we go back to this drawing you can see that it has a lot of outlines at the moment and what I did is I just changed those outlines to the correct type of edges and you can see how dramatically that transforms this drawing it adds so much realism back into the drawing because like I said in reality we don't have outlines we just have these types of edges and knowing these things before you shade will help you determine how you should shade a particular area and finally let's talk a bit about detail and texture detail can make your drawing look so realistic but there are a few common beginner mistakes to avoid the first mistake is having your details not really look like they're part of the surface you're drawing them onto for example if you're drawing creases or wrinkles on the skin it's common for them to just look like lines drawn on top of the skin rather than actually looking like part of the surface that you're drawing them on top of to avoid this don't just draw lines on top of the skin you need to consider the value that you're drawing them on top of so for example if you're drawing a detail on top of a area that's light in value then that detail will need to be lighter whereas if you're drawing some details in a more Shadow area then they can be darker and also think about how you'll transition out of different details and textures because one thing that I see with beginner's drawings is that you might do a really great looking texture but around the edges where the texture stops I often see quite a harsh and abrupt transition between the different textures so for example if you're doing the hairline or facial hair I often see this very sort of cut out look around where the texture stops there isn't much of a transition this can be because you're stopping your details at exactly the same point so it forms this sort of Edge and line that's very harsh so I try not to stop all of my details at exactly the same point I want to create that Feathering effect and I make sure to add variety in my details and textures if your textures look like every marking that you've done has been done in the same way so if every Freckle is the same shape the same size the same Darkness things can look a bit too uniformed and it won't look natural in nature there's a lot of natural variety so for something to look realistic you need to go in and mix it up a bit you need to do some detail slightly lighter some darker some bigger some smaller add a bit of variety and really study your reference to figure out where that variety is in your subject I also like to add layers of shading and blend a little bit over certain details just to tie them into the surface that they're on top of a little bit better to create realistic textures you need to try and create that illusion of how something would feel if you was to touch it in real life you want to create that illusion on your paper and in my drawing course I really go through the different types of shading techniques that you can use that will help create different textures and how to use different Mark making techniques to create those different textures as well as well as how to use other tools like blending tools and also erasers to really sort of elevate that texture and Detail in your drawing I hope this training has given you an idea of what mistakes you might be making and some things that you can practice and focus on to make your drawings more realistic if you want to take this to the next level and learn everything you need to create really realistic drawings then check out my course drawing decoded by the end of the course you'll be able to create realistic drawings and if you make a mistake you'll be able to identify exactly what's wrong with your drawing and know how to fix it so that one mistake doesn't ruin your entire drawing so check out the details below to learn more about this course and I hope your next drawing is your most realistic one yet